Lured by sunny weather, live jazz and the prospect of watching artists transform pavement into paintings, thousands of people jammed the streets of downtown Lake Worth for the final day of the 17th Annual Street Painting Festival.

See video, photos from the Street Painting Festival

Organizers estimated attendance at over 100,000 during the two-day festival, which ended at 6 p.m. Sunday.

"Weather means everything," said Beth Johnston, executive director of the Greater Lake Worth Chamber of Commerce. "The economic impact of this over two days is incredible."

Works created with pastel chalk and hours of labor ranged from a comical version of Calvin & Hobbes to serious reproductions of works by artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Salvador Dali.

"I love getting the arts out in front of people who might not necessarily see it," said Rod Tryon, a veteran street painter from New York who specializes in three-dimensional works. "Interacting with the crowd is really fun. You get immediate response."

Tryon, a street painter for 24 years, was one of several festival "headliners" who worked in the Featured Artist Gallery Row near the post office on Lucerne Avenue. His work, titled Give Peace a Chance, showed a pair of white doves flying out from a structure, with rocks forming the shape of a peace sign.

Organizers of the nonprofit festival cover travel and lodging expenses for featured artists but do not pay for their work.

Several people gathered around Arturo Salazar’s recreation of Santa Rufina, a 1665 painting by Bartolome Esteban Murillo . The likeness of a woman holding water jugs with a cape draped over one arm looked like a canvas painting on the pavement.

By the time the works were mostly completed, many of the street painters were covered with chalk and began to look like they, too, were painted.

"I couldn’t imagine doing this," said Jeff Paron of Boynton Beach. "It’s labor intensive."

Artist Janet Tombros of Apopka, whose creation showed a man with a dog from the point of view of an ant, said she works at street painting events throughout Florida and was impressed by the more than 250 works at Lake Worth’s festival.

"I’ve never seen this many artists down on the ground," Tombros said.

The Bamboo Room, a destination for lovers of blues and rock tucked away on a side street in downtown Lake Worth, will reopen Feb. 17 after being closed for nearly three years.

The blues club, opened in 1999, closed at the end of May 2008, citing the economy and a lack of midweek customers.

When it reopens, the Bamboo Room will host live music shows three days a week, Thursday through Saturday, instead of the five days a week it was open during its first run.

Tickets will cost $10 to $25 with most shows costing $10 to $15, club manager Donald Becker said.

Becker said the club built its new business model by polling former customers via e-mail.

"We got about 1,000 replies about what they want to hear, what they want to drink, how much they want to pay," Becker said.

Located at 25 S. J St., the Bamboo Room is south of Lake Worth’s two main business arteries, Lake and Lucerne avenues. But its musicians have drawn crowds from as far away as Miami and the Florida Keys.

Bamboo Room performers have included the late rock pioneer Bo Diddley, blues legend John Hammond and guitarist Les Dudek .

Becker is working overtime to line up talent for the coming weeks. He plans to reopen the Bamboo Room with a show by blues/rock guitarist David Shelley and the Bluestone band. Shelley was the last act to play the Bamboo Room before it closed in May 2008.

"I’m kind of a karma guy, and so is he," Becker said.

Other musicians and bands on the Bamboo Room’s winter calendar include Iko-Iko, Albert Castiglia, Ben Prestage and Bobby Lee Rodgers .

Local performers will be invited to play the Bamboo Room, but they will have to audition.

"Nobody’s going to be able to walk in," Becker said. "We don’t want to lose the reputation we built for music."

City officials and downtown business owners welcomed news of the Bamboo Room’s comeback.

The blues club’s reopening creates an excitement that could spur other business owners to open in downtown Lake Worth, said Beth Johnston, executive director of the Greater Lake Worth Chamber of Commerce.

"This is great news," Mayor Rene Varela said. "It’s coming at a time when a lot of residents are trying to develop a strong music scene in Lake Worth."

Vice Mayor Suzanne Mulvehill said she has been to the Bamboo Room with friends who drove up from Miami to see the featured group.

"Lake Worth is a regional draw, whether it’s the beach, the art, the music or the history," Mulvehill said.

"This is what Lake Worth needs," said Amy Saleeby, owner of One Good Deed Marketing, the company that organizes the twice-a-month Party in the Plaza music events based at the Cultural Plaza downtown. "It’s going to benefit the merchants downtown."

LAKE WORTH — The Party in the Plaza series of free concerts resumes Friday with The Aquaphonics scheduled to play in downtown Lake Worth.

The concerts will be held from 6 to 10 p.m. on the first and third Fridays of each month, and are based at the Cultural Plaza on M Street between Lake and Lucerne avenues.

Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control will offer dogs and cats for adoption on the first Fridays of the month.

Future concerts include Ladies & Gentlemen on Oct. 1 and Vanilla Monk on Oct. 15.

Lake Worth City Manager Susan Stanton, formerly Largo City Manager Steve Stanton, is the subject of a two-hour CNN documentary scheduled to air this weekend .

She hopes it will alter public perceptions about gender change.

“I hope to give people another perspective,” Stanton said. “I’m hoping when people see it they’ll say: ‘I get it. I understand why people do this.’”

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LAKE WORTH — The Museum of the City of Lake Worth will close as a city department Sept. 30, but will remain open 20 hours a week under the direction of volunteers, city officials said Friday.

Beverly Mustaine, the museum’s curator for nearly 15 years, will leave the museum at the end of September.

Mustaine is the author of the 1999 book On Lake Worth and is the second curator of the seven-room museum that opened in 1982 on the second floor of the City Hall Annex on Lake Avenue. The museum houses thousands of old photographs, journals, history quilts and a special room dedicated to Finnish, Polish and Lithuanian immigrants.

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See photos of the Friday night sound walk

Friday night’s city commission meeting began outside the library on M Street as a band played on stage across the street and dozens of people milled around Lake and Lucerne avenues during the twice-a-month Evening on the Avenues.

“Welcome to the Lake Worth City Commission dance off,” Mayor Jeff Clemens joked as the city clerk recorded attendance on a clipboard.

The commission’s special mission: Measure sound coming from bars and restaurants as part of a plan to revise the city’s noise ordinance and resolve the conflict between bar owners and downtown residents who say they’re losing sleep because of music that sometimes lasts until 2 a.m. Read the full story

Mojito’s The Retreat is gaining a following as a late-night spot with live entertainment that serves 10 varieties of its namesake Cuban rum drink.

Owners of the bar at 129 N. Federal Highway applied for a nightclub license in January in hopes of gaining the right to stay open until 5 a.m., as two other Lake Worth nightclubs do.

Ed Muller, manager of the establishment owned by his family, says Mojito’s is grandfathered in as a late-night spot because the bar was licensed before 1947, when the city established ordinances governing bar hours.

City Planner Fedner Alcius has a different interpretation. Alcius says Mojito’s should close at 2 a.m. because there is no record of a 5 a.m. bar at that location after the bar licensing ordinance was enacted.

Muller and his attorney, Dennis Koehler, recently produced a letter from John Lang Sr. who said Lang’s Beer Garden, owned by his grandparents at the same location as Mojito’s, stayed open later than 2 a.m. during the 1940s and 1950s.

“If my memory serves me correctly, I did not close the bar at 2 a.m., typically keeping it open until well past 3 a.m. on weekends,” Lang wrote.

Muller’s application for a nightclub is scheduled to go before city commissioners on July 21.
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